Nursing as a Process of Humanization: The Impact of an Undergraduate Mental Health Nursing Course on the Prejudice Toward People Living with a Mental Illness

The stigma attached to mental illness can be more detrimental than the illness itself. The undergraduate mental health nursing course is an optimal time to cultivate students’ positive attitudes toward people living with a mental illness and address the presence of prejudice against such individuals. Two quasi-experimental studies were conducted to determine the impact of an undergraduate mental health nursing course on students’ attitudes toward people living with a general mental illness, depression, and schizophrenia. The first study used a quasi-experimental single-group pretest posttest design. The sample included nursing students (N = 44) in an accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing program in New York City. The intervention was the undergraduate mental health nursing course. Students completed pretest data at the beginning of the 2021 summer term and posttest data at the end of the term. Prejudice toward the mental health conditions of general mental illness, depression, and schizophrenia were measured through the use of three shortened, condition-specific versions of the Prejudice towards People with Mental Illness scale: Prejudice towards People with Mental Illness, Shortened Version (PPMI-SV); Prejudice towards People with Depression, Shortened Version (PPD-SV); and Prejudice towards People with Schizophrenia, Shortened Version (PPS-SV) scale. Each of the three instruments has the same four subscales that represent dimensions of prejudice: fear/avoidance, unpredictability, authoritarianism, and malevolence. Paired-samples t tests were used to analyze the data. A statistically significant decrease in prejudice scores was found concerning general mental illness (p = .03, d = 0.23), depression (p = .01, d = 0.31), and schizophrenia (p = .013, d = 0.34). Subscale analysis revealed a significant decrease in attitudes of fear and avoidance toward people living with a general mental illness (p <.001, d = 0.46), and schizophrenia (p = .001, d = 0.54), but not for depression. Attitudes regarding the ...